Kabanata Kabanata 9 · Last of all comes the tyrannical man, about whom we have to

enquire, Whence is he, and how does he live—in happiness or in misery?

There is, however, a previous question of the nature and number of the

appetites, which I should like to consider first. Some of them are

unlawful, and yet admit of being chastened and weakened in various

degrees by the power of reason and law. ‘What appetites do you mean?’ I

mean those which are awake when the reasoning powers are asleep, which

get up and walk about naked without any self-respect or shame; and

there is no conceivable folly or crime, however cruel or unnatural, of

which, in imagination, they may not be guilty. ‘True,’ he said; ‘very

true.’ But when a man’s pulse beats temperately; and he has supped on a

feast of reason and come to a knowledge of himself before going to

rest, and has satisfied his desires just enough to prevent their

perturbing his reason, which remains clear and luminous, and when he is

free from quarrel and heat,—the visions which he has on his bed are

least irregular and abnormal. Even in good men there is such an

irregular wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep.

To return:—You remember what was said of the democrat; that he was the

son of a miserly father, who encouraged the saving desires and

repressed the ornamental and expensive ones; presently the youth got

into fine company, and began to entertain a dislike to his father’s

narrow ways; and being a better man than the corrupters of his youth,

he came to a mean, and led a life, not of lawless or slavish passion,

but of regular and successive indulgence. Now imagine that the youth

has become a father, and has a son who is exposed to the same

temptations, and has companions who lead him into every sort of

iniquity, and parents and friends who try to keep him right. The

counsellors of evil find that their only chance of retaining him is to

implant in his soul a monster drone, or love; while other desires buzz

around him and mystify him with sweet sounds and scents, this monster

love takes possession of him, and puts an end to every true or modest

thought or wish. Love, like drunkenness and madness, is a tyranny; and

the tyrannical man, whether made by nature or habit, is just a

drinking, lusting, furious sort of animal.

And how does such an one live? ‘Nay, that you must tell me.’ Well then,

I fancy that he will live amid revelries and harlotries, and love will

be the lord and master of the house. Many desires require much money,

and so he spends all that he has and borrows more; and when he has

nothing the young ravens are still in the nest in which they were

hatched, crying for food. Love urges them on; and they must be

gratified by force or fraud, or if not, they become painful and

troublesome; and as the new pleasures succeed the old ones, so will the

son take possession of the goods of his parents; if they show signs of

refusing, he will defraud and deceive them; and if they openly resist,

what then? ‘I can only say, that I should not much like to be in their

place.’ But, O heavens, Adeimantus, to think that for some new-fangled

and unnecessary love he will give up his old father and mother, best

and dearest of friends, or enslave them to the fancies of the hour!

Truly a tyrannical son is a blessing to his father and mother! When

there is no more to be got out of them, he turns burglar or pickpocket,

or robs a temple. Love overmasters the thoughts of his youth, and he

becomes in sober reality the monster that he was sometimes in sleep. He

waxes strong in all violence and lawlessness; and is ready for any deed

of daring that will supply the wants of his rabble-rout. In a

well-ordered State there are only a few such, and these in time of war

go out and become the mercenaries of a tyrant. But in time of peace

they stay at home and do mischief; they are the thieves, footpads,

cut-purses, man-stealers of the community; or if they are able to

speak, they turn false-witnesses and informers. ‘No small catalogue of

crimes truly, even if the perpetrators are few.’ Yes, I said; but small

and great are relative terms, and no crimes which are committed by them

approach those of the tyrant, whom this class, growing strong and

numerous, create out of themselves. If the people yield, well and good,

but, if they resist, then, as before he beat his father and mother, so

now he beats his fatherland and motherland, and places his mercenaries

over them. Such men in their early days live with flatterers, and they

themselves flatter others, in order to gain their ends; but they soon

discard their followers when they have no longer any need of them; they

are always either masters or servants,—the joys of friendship are

unknown to them. And they are utterly treacherous and unjust, if the

nature of justice be at all understood by us. They realize our dream;

and he who is the most of a tyrant by nature, and leads the life of a

tyrant for the longest time, will be the worst of them, and being the

worst of them, will also be the most miserable.

Like man, like State,—the tyrannical man will answer to tyranny, which

is the extreme opposite of the royal State; for one is the best and the

other the worst. But which is the happier? Great and terrible as the

tyrant may appear enthroned amid his satellites, let us not be afraid

to go in and ask; and the answer is, that the monarchical is the

happiest, and the tyrannical the most miserable of States. And may we

not ask the same question about the men themselves, requesting some one

to look into them who is able to penetrate the inner nature of man, and

will not be panic-struck by the vain pomp of tyranny? I will suppose

that he is one who has lived with him, and has seen him in family life,

or perhaps in the hour of trouble and danger.

Assuming that we ourselves are the impartial judge for whom we seek,

let us begin by comparing the individual and State, and ask first of

all, whether the State is likely to be free or enslaved—Will there not

be a little freedom and a great deal of slavery? And the freedom is of

the bad, and the slavery of the good; and this applies to the man as

well as to the State; for his soul is full of meanness and slavery, and

the better part is enslaved to the worse. He cannot do what he would,

and his mind is full of confusion; he is the very reverse of a freeman.

The State will be poor and full of misery and sorrow; and the man’s

soul will also be poor and full of sorrows, and he will be the most

miserable of men. No, not the most miserable, for there is yet a more

miserable. ‘Who is that?’ The tyrannical man who has the misfortune

also to become a public tyrant. ‘There I suspect that you are right.’

Say rather, ‘I am sure;’ conjecture is out of place in an enquiry of

this nature. He is like a wealthy owner of slaves, only he has more of

them than any private individual. You will say, ‘The owners of slaves

are not generally in any fear of them.’ But why? Because the whole city

is in a league which protects the individual. Suppose however that one

of these owners and his household is carried off by a god into a

wilderness, where there are no freemen to help him—will he not be in an

agony of terror?—will he not be compelled to flatter his slaves and to

promise them many things sore against his will? And suppose the same

god who carried him off were to surround him with neighbours who

declare that no man ought to have slaves, and that the owners of them

should be punished with death. ‘Still worse and worse! He will be in

the midst of his enemies.’ And is not our tyrant such a captive soul,

who is tormented by a swarm of passions which he cannot indulge; living

indoors always like a woman, and jealous of those who can go out and

see the world?

Having so many evils, will not the most miserable of men be still more

miserable in a public station? Master of others when he is not master

of himself; like a sick man who is compelled to be an athlete; the

meanest of slaves and the most abject of flatterers; wanting all

things, and never able to satisfy his desires; always in fear and

distraction, like the State of which he is the representative. His

jealous, hateful, faithless temper grows worse with command; he is more

and more faithless, envious, unrighteous,—the most wretched of men, a

misery to himself and to others. And so let us have a final trial and

proclamation; need we hire a herald, or shall I proclaim the result?

‘Made the proclamation yourself.’ The son of Ariston (the best) is of

opinion that the best and justest of men is also the happiest, and that

this is he who is the most royal master of himself; and that the unjust

man is he who is the greatest tyrant of himself and of his State. And I

add further—‘seen or unseen by gods or men.’

This is our first proof. The second is derived from the three kinds of

pleasure, which answer to the three elements of the soul—reason,

passion, desire; under which last is comprehended avarice as well as

sensual appetite, while passion includes ambition, party-feeling, love

of reputation. Reason, again, is solely directed to the attainment of

truth, and careless of money and reputation. In accordance with the

difference of men’s natures, one of these three principles is in the

ascendant, and they have their several pleasures corresponding to them.

Interrogate now the three natures, and each one will be found praising

his own pleasures and depreciating those of others. The money-maker

will contrast the vanity of knowledge with the solid advantages of

wealth. The ambitious man will despise knowledge which brings no

honour; whereas the philosopher will regard only the fruition of truth,

and will call other pleasures necessary rather than good. Now, how

shall we decide between them? Is there any better criterion than

experience and knowledge? And which of the three has the truest

knowledge and the widest experience? The experience of youth makes the

philosopher acquainted with the two kinds of desire, but the avaricious

and the ambitious man never taste the pleasures of truth and wisdom.

Honour he has equally with them; they are ‘judged of him,’ but he is

‘not judged of them,’ for they never attain to the knowledge of true

being. And his instrument is reason, whereas their standard is only

wealth and honour; and if by reason we are to judge, his good will be

the truest. And so we arrive at the result that the pleasure of the

rational part of the soul, and a life passed in such pleasure is the

pleasantest. He who has a right to judge judges thus. Next comes the

life of ambition, and, in the third place, that of money-making.

Twice has the just man overthrown the unjust—once more, as in an

Olympian contest, first offering up a prayer to the saviour Zeus, let

him try a fall. A wise man whispers to me that the pleasures of the

wise are true and pure; all others are a shadow only. Let us examine

this: Is not pleasure opposed to pain, and is there not a mean state

which is neither? When a man is sick, nothing is more pleasant to him

than health. But this he never found out while he was well. In pain he

desires only to cease from pain; on the other hand, when he is in an

ecstasy of pleasure, rest is painful to him. Thus rest or cessation is

both pleasure and pain. But can that which is neither become both?

Again, pleasure and pain are motions, and the absence of them is rest;

but if so, how can the absence of either of them be the other? Thus we

are led to infer that the contradiction is an appearance only, and

witchery of the senses. And these are not the only pleasures, for there

are others which have no preceding pains. Pure pleasure then is not the

absence of pain, nor pure pain the absence of pleasure; although most

of the pleasures which reach the mind through the body are reliefs of

pain, and have not only their reactions when they depart, but their

anticipations before they come. They can be best described in a simile.

There is in nature an upper, lower, and middle region, and he who

passes from the lower to the middle imagines that he is going up and is

already in the upper world; and if he were taken back again would

think, and truly think, that he was descending. All this arises out of

his ignorance of the true upper, middle, and lower regions. And a like

confusion happens with pleasure and pain, and with many other things.

The man who compares grey with black, calls grey white; and the man who

compares absence of pain with pain, calls the absence of pain pleasure.

Again, hunger and thirst are inanitions of the body, ignorance and

folly of the soul; and food is the satisfaction of the one, knowledge

of the other. Now which is the purer satisfaction—that of eating and

drinking, or that of knowledge? Consider the matter thus: The

satisfaction of that which has more existence is truer than of that

which has less. The invariable and immortal has a more real existence

than the variable and mortal, and has a corresponding measure of

knowledge and truth. The soul, again, has more existence and truth and

knowledge than the body, and is therefore more really satisfied and has

a more natural pleasure. Those who feast only on earthly food, are

always going at random up to the middle and down again; but they never

pass into the true upper world, or have a taste of true pleasure. They

are like fatted beasts, full of gluttony and sensuality, and ready to

kill one another by reason of their insatiable lust; for they are not

filled with true being, and their vessel is leaky (Gorgias). Their

pleasures are mere shadows of pleasure, mixed with pain, coloured and

intensified by contrast, and therefore intensely desired; and men go

fighting about them, as Stesichorus says that the Greeks fought about

the shadow of Helen at Troy, because they know not the truth.

The same may be said of the passionate element:—the desires of the

ambitious soul, as well as of the covetous, have an inferior

satisfaction. Only when under the guidance of reason do either of the

other principles do their own business or attain the pleasure which is

natural to them. When not attaining, they compel the other parts of the

soul to pursue a shadow of pleasure which is not theirs. And the more

distant they are from philosophy and reason, the more distant they will

be from law and order, and the more illusive will be their pleasures.

The desires of love and tyranny are the farthest from law, and those of

the king are nearest to it. There is one genuine pleasure, and two

spurious ones: the tyrant goes beyond even the latter; he has run away

altogether from law and reason. Nor can the measure of his inferiority

be told, except in a figure. The tyrant is the third removed from the

oligarch, and has therefore, not a shadow of his pleasure, but the

shadow of a shadow only. The oligarch, again, is thrice removed from

the king, and thus we get the formula 3 x 3, which is the number of a

surface, representing the shadow which is the tyrant’s pleasure, and if

you like to cube this ‘number of the beast,’ you will find that the

measure of the difference amounts to 729; the king is 729 times more

happy than the tyrant. And this extraordinary number is NEARLY equal to

the number of days and nights in a year (365 x 2 = 730); and is

therefore concerned with human life. This is the interval between a

good and bad man in happiness only: what must be the difference between

them in comeliness of life and virtue!

Perhaps you may remember some one saying at the beginning of our

discussion that the unjust man was profited if he had the reputation of

justice. Now that we know the nature of justice and injustice, let us

make an image of the soul, which will personify his words. First of

all, fashion a multitudinous beast, having a ring of heads of all

manner of animals, tame and wild, and able to produce and change them

at pleasure. Suppose now another form of a lion, and another of a man;

the second smaller than the first, the third than the second; join them

together and cover them with a human skin, in which they are completely

concealed. When this has been done, let us tell the supporter of

injustice that he is feeding up the beasts and starving the man. The

maintainer of justice, on the other hand, is trying to strengthen the

man; he is nourishing the gentle principle within him, and making an

alliance with the lion heart, in order that he may be able to keep down

the many-headed hydra, and bring all into unity with each other and

with themselves. Thus in every point of view, whether in relation to

pleasure, honour, or advantage, the just man is right, and the unjust

wrong.

But now, let us reason with the unjust, who is not intentionally in

error. Is not the noble that which subjects the beast to the man, or

rather to the God in man; the ignoble, that which subjects the man to

the beast? And if so, who would receive gold on condition that he was

to degrade the noblest part of himself under the worst?—who would sell

his son or daughter into the hands of brutal and evil men, for any

amount of money? And will he sell his own fairer and diviner part

without any compunction to the most godless and foul? Would he not be

worse than Eriphyle, who sold her husband’s life for a necklace? And

intemperance is the letting loose of the multiform monster, and pride

and sullenness are the growth and increase of the lion and serpent

element, while luxury and effeminacy are caused by a too great

relaxation of spirit. Flattery and meanness again arise when the

spirited element is subjected to avarice, and the lion is habituated to

become a monkey. The real disgrace of handicraft arts is, that those

who are engaged in them have to flatter, instead of mastering their

desires; therefore we say that they should be placed under the control

of the better principle in another because they have none in

themselves; not, as Thrasymachus imagined, to the injury of the

subjects, but for their good. And our intention in educating the young,

is to give them self-control; the law desires to nurse up in them a

higher principle, and when they have acquired this, they may go their

ways.

‘What, then, shall a man profit, if he gain the whole world’ and become

more and more wicked? Or what shall he profit by escaping discovery, if

the concealment of evil prevents the cure? If he had been punished, the

brute within him would have been silenced, and the gentler element

liberated; and he would have united temperance, justice, and wisdom in

his soul—a union better far than any combination of bodily gifts. The

man of understanding will honour knowledge above all; in the next place

he will keep under his body, not only for the sake of health and

strength, but in order to attain the most perfect harmony of body and

soul. In the acquisition of riches, too, he will aim at order and

harmony; he will not desire to heap up wealth without measure, but he

will fear that the increase of wealth will disturb the constitution of

his own soul. For the same reason he will only accept such honours as

will make him a better man; any others he will decline. ‘In that case,’

said he, ‘he will never be a politician.’ Yes, but he will, in his own

city; though probably not in his native country, unless by some divine

accident. ‘You mean that he will be a citizen of the ideal city, which

has no place upon earth.’ But in heaven, I replied, there is a pattern

of such a city, and he who wishes may order his life after that image.

Whether such a state is or ever will be matters not; he will act

according to that pattern and no other...

The most noticeable points in the 9th Book of the Republic are:—(1) the

account of pleasure; (2) the number of the interval which divides the

king from the tyrant; (3) the pattern which is in heaven.

1. Plato’s account of pleasure is remarkable for moderation, and in

this respect contrasts with the later Platonists and the views which

are attributed to them by Aristotle. He is not, like the Cynics,

opposed to all pleasure, but rather desires that the several parts of

the soul shall have their natural satisfaction; he even agrees with the

Epicureans in describing pleasure as something more than the absence of

pain. This is proved by the circumstance that there are pleasures which

have no antecedent pains (as he also remarks in the Philebus), such as

the pleasures of smell, and also the pleasures of hope and

anticipation. In the previous book he had made the distinction between

necessary and unnecessary pleasure, which is repeated by Aristotle, and

he now observes that there are a further class of ‘wild beast’

pleasures, corresponding to Aristotle’s (Greek). He dwells upon the

relative and unreal character of sensual pleasures and the illusion

which arises out of the contrast of pleasure and pain, pointing out the

superiority of the pleasures of reason, which are at rest, over the

fleeting pleasures of sense and emotion. The pre-eminence of royal

pleasure is shown by the fact that reason is able to form a judgment of

the lower pleasures, while the two lower parts of the soul are

incapable of judging the pleasures of reason. Thus, in his treatment of

pleasure, as in many other subjects, the philosophy of Plato is ‘sawn

up into quantities’ by Aristotle; the analysis which was originally

made by him became in the next generation the foundation of further

technical distinctions. Both in Plato and Aristotle we note the

illusion under which the ancients fell of regarding the transience of

pleasure as a proof of its unreality, and of confounding the permanence

of the intellectual pleasures with the unchangeableness of the

knowledge from which they are derived. Neither do we like to admit that

the pleasures of knowledge, though more elevating, are not more lasting

than other pleasures, and are almost equally dependent on the accidents

of our bodily state (Introduction to Philebus).

2. The number of the interval which separates the king from the tyrant,

and royal from tyrannical pleasures, is 729, the cube of 9. Which Plato

characteristically designates as a number concerned with human life,

because NEARLY equivalent to the number of days and nights in the year.

He is desirous of proclaiming that the interval between them is

immeasurable, and invents a formula to give expression to his idea.

Those who spoke of justice as a cube, of virtue as an art of measuring

(Prot.), saw no inappropriateness in conceiving the soul under the

figure of a line, or the pleasure of the tyrant as separated from the

pleasure of the king by the numerical interval of 729. And in modern

times we sometimes use metaphorically what Plato employed as a

philosophical formula. ‘It is not easy to estimate the loss of the

tyrant, except perhaps in this way,’ says Plato. So we might say, that

although the life of a good man is not to be compared to that of a bad

man, yet you may measure the difference between them by valuing one

minute of the one at an hour of the other (‘One day in thy courts is

better than a thousand’), or you might say that ‘there is an infinite

difference.’ But this is not so much as saying, in homely phrase, ‘They

are a thousand miles asunder.’ And accordingly Plato finds the natural

vehicle of his thoughts in a progression of numbers; this arithmetical

formula he draws out with the utmost seriousness, and both here and in

the number of generation seems to find an additional proof of the truth

of his speculation in forming the number into a geometrical figure;

just as persons in our own day are apt to fancy that a statement is

verified when it has been only thrown into an abstract form. In

speaking of the number 729 as proper to human life, he probably

intended to intimate that one year of the tyrannical = 12 hours of the

royal life.

The simple observation that the comparison of two similar solids is

effected by the comparison of the cubes of their sides, is the

mathematical groundwork of this fanciful expression. There is some

difficulty in explaining the steps by which the number 729 is obtained;

the oligarch is removed in the third degree from the royal and

aristocratical, and the tyrant in the third degree from the

oligarchical; but we have to arrange the terms as the sides of a square

and to count the oligarch twice over, thus reckoning them not as = 5

but as = 9. The square of 9 is passed lightly over as only a step

towards the cube.

3. Towards the close of the Republic, Plato seems to be more and more

convinced of the ideal character of his own speculations. At the end of

the 9th Book the pattern which is in heaven takes the place of the city

of philosophers on earth. The vision which has received form and

substance at his hands, is now discovered to be at a distance. And yet

this distant kingdom is also the rule of man’s life. (‘Say not lo!

here, or lo! there, for the kingdom of God is within you.’) Thus a note

is struck which prepares for the revelation of a future life in the

following Book. But the future life is present still; the ideal of

politics is to be realized in the individual.

BOOK 10.